is own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea,
Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland rivers; and, having done this,
set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies, mountains, and lakes,
which, until his time, had never been so much as attempted.

He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even Titian and
Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools. In their foreground work
neither Titian nor Leonardo _could_ be excelled; but Titian and Leonardo
were throughly conventional in all _but_ their foregrounds. Turner was
equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and on
his daring additions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all
modern landscape has been founded. You will never meet any truly great
living landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his
obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him, but as having
been led by Turner to look in nature for what he would otherwise either
not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared to represent.

100. Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us with the
_type_ of perfect landscape art: and the richness of that art, with
which you are at present surrounded, and which enables you to open your
walls as it were into so many windows, through which you can see
whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you
will do well to remember as _Turneresque_.

So then you have these five periods to recollect--you will have no
difficulty, I trust, in doing so,--the periods of Giotto, Leonardo,
Titian, pastoralism, and Turner.

101. But Turner's work is yet only begun. His greatness is, as yet,
altogether denied by many; and to the full, felt by very few. But every
day that he lies in his grave will bring some new acknowledgment of his
power; and through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet
unborn will learn to behold the light of nature.

You have some ground to-night to accuse me of dogmatism. I can bring no
proof before you of what I so boldly assert. But I would not have
accepted your invitation to address you, unless I had felt that I had a
right to be, in this matter, dogmatic. I did not come here to tell you
of my beliefs or my conjectures; I came to tell you the truth which I
have given fifteen years of my life to ascertain, that this man, this
Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you,
will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and